How Donald Duck Helps Debunk Lies About San Francisco

How Disney uses Donald Duck to push its agenda is well-documented. (Mika Baumeister)

There’s a text Baydestrians need to consult on how to parse Big Media narratives from what’s really going on in their backyards. Outside of our own blinders-guarded lives in the Bay Area, not to mention the United States or Eurocentrism broadly, we can forget that for many throughout the world there are two 9/11s. On September 11, 1973, the “other” 9/11 tore Chile apart. The constitutionally-elected president Salvador Allende was deposed by a United States-backed coup, coordinated in great part by the CIA to make way for Milton Friedman and his Chicago Boys’ capitalist policies. This, for those throwing the term around, is a truly classic example of neoliberalism.

A book called Para Leer al Pato Donald, or How to Read Donald Duck, was published in 1971 to discuss the then-still looming perils of United States venture into Chile. It’s a brief meditation on how one of the largest entertainment companies in the world publishes comics, cartoons, and stories meant to promote narratives of racism, classism, sexism, and, in the relevant Chilean case, imperialism. Written by Chilean activist and author Ariel Dorfman and Belgian sociologist Armand Mattleart, the book was only legally published in the United States in 2018 after decades of mass seizure and impounding whenever the text was shipped overseas. No publishers in the states would touch the troubling counter-narratives, true though they might be. In San Francisco in 2023, there are a few lessons we can learn from this troubling case of top-down suppression of narrative.

San Francisco is in a doom loop

Ever heard of a Floridian named Ron DeSantis? He has a vested interest in making San Francisco look like a dumpster fire, even though he says he spent just 20 minutes filming his propaganda. The dude raised a record-breaking $8.2 million in 24 hours for his 2024 presidential campaign with a handful of charming, neutral backers. Just a few include actual law-breaking super PAC Never Back Down and Silicon Valley freakazoid Joe Lonsdale, who founded the deeply-troubling Palantir and says people taking child leave from work are “losers” who don’t understand the “correct masculine response.” So, next time you hear San Francisco is in a spiral that ends with it sinking into the ocean — inexplicably just like Detroit — keep in mind there are folks who profit from that thinking.

Homeless people are violent and unsafe

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) found that one-third of cis-women, one-quarter of cis-men, and almost 40 percent of transgender homeless participants in a study experienced physical or sexual harm in the prior year. Still, they wrote “instead of focusing on safety for our unhoused neighbors, the misperception that people without homes are perpetrators, rather than victims, of violence contributes to both criminalizing homelessness and dehumanizing people without housing.” It’s normal to feel uncomfortable around folks experiencing mental health issues on the street. It’s a Walgreens-ass lie meant to confuse locals and generate sales that an average San Franciscan is more likely than someone living in squalor and addiction to be hurt by another person living in a tent who didn’t eat breakfast that morning. The study even found that a year after becoming housed those same people’s likelihood of being harmed fell by half. Imagine if there were a way to solve that problem?

There’s not enough housing in the city

Following the train of thought above: There are numerous already-built properties in San Francisco that can be made fit-for-dwelling. And the city knows that; on June 23, 2023, City Hall announced the acquisition of five “sites” — otherwise known as properties including hotels, burned-out buildings, and bars — to be slicked up into 550 new homes. This same approach is highlighted by the state program Project Homekey, a communist-style program deserving of much more funding. Plus, how can both Downtown be an emptied out ghost town and the city have nowhere to put people?

This one’s easy, too: Who stands to gain from a pro-building narrative in the Bay Area? Ask local PAC GrowSF. The group bought a local media outlet to further the agendas of its anti-Lyft driver co-founder (Sachin Agarwal) and YIMBY Law board member (Steven Buss). Knowing what’s in it for those telling stories about a place, an issue, or a problem is as important as reading what they write.

These are just a few examples of how the powers that be in the Bay Area — and nationally — prefer locals to stay afraid, stay unquestioning, and stay angry about the wrong reasons. It’s important to let the truth ring loud and clear, against corporate interests and based on real facts and testimonies like Dorfman and Mattleart proved with their work. “Those of you who live here, those of you who walk the streets of San Francisco,” Mayor London Breed said to a crowd on June 23. “You can tell another story. You can talk about the story of San Francisco based on your own experience.”